Introduction

CHAPTER 1

BACKGROUND LITERATURE

This dissertation will explore the English language development of 138 young Indonesian learners in their first and second year at a pesantren, an Indonesian Islamic boarding school, which promotes English learning especially through peer interaction. If we consider language development from a usage based theoretical perspective, frequency of exposure and experience are the main drivers of language development. The learners at the pesantren have little access to authentic English and the danger may be that they rely too much on their own interactions for input and output without authentic examples, which may lead to fossilization and pidginization. This chapter presents the background literature, the context and the theoretical positions of this dissertation.

1.1. Introduction

Peer interaction or learner-to-learner interaction has been widely used in second or foreign language classrooms across the globe to facilitate learners in order to improve fluency in the target language. In most cases, peer interaction is implemented through common classroom practices such as drills or information gap exercises. Several studies have supported the practice by indicating that peer interaction can promote L2 acquisition particularly in a psychological sense where learners feel less anxious in expressing their thoughts in L2 in comparison to learner-teacher interaction (e.g., Philp, Adams, &

Iwashita, 2014; Loewen & Sato, 2018; Philp et al., 2014). However, most of these studies are conducted in laboratory or classroom settings in which the interaction is manipulated in some ways by the researchers and carried out in a relatively short period of time (e.g., Mackey 2012; Loewen 2015). In a meta-analysis, Mackey and Goo (2007) found that from 28 studies that they analysed, 64% of them were conducted in laboratory settings, while the rest were conducted in classroom settings. Additionally, these studies generally examined the features of interactions during negotiation of meaning and how they affect L2 learning (Loewen & Sato, 2018). So far, however, there has been little discussion on the long-term impact of peer interaction, especially of that taking place in naturalistic settings. This is because it is sometimes difficult for researchers to manage the complexities of the variables in the naturalistic classroom context (Shadish, Cook &

Campbell 2002).

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However, in Indonesia, there is a relatively unknown educational system called pesantren, which may allow researchers to investigate the impact of extensive L2 peer-interaction on the learners in the long run. This is made possible because students in a pesantren live and study within a school complex. Moreover, some pesantren institutions in Indonesia require their learners to communicate in the target languages (i.e., English and Arabic) outside the classrooms. It should be noted that although not every pesantren institution in Indonesia obliges their students to use L2 in daily communication, such practice is widely found across the country especially in the pesantrens that have adopted a modern curriculum (see Bin Tahir, 2015, 2016; Bin Tahir, Atmowardoyo, Dollah &

Rinantanti, 2017; Jubaidah, 2015; Aziez, 2016; Risdianto, 2016; Raswan, 2017). A further discussion of differences among pesantrens is beyond the scope of the current study. However, peer-interaction in the L2 in the context of a pesantren is different from the practice at any other educational institution. Not only is it used as a form of language learning, but also as a form of daily communication to exchange meaning. Moreover, as is clear from observation, learners in a pesantren spend significantly more time communicating with their peers than with their teachers, who are more proficient L2 speakers. Thus, the majority of the learners’ input is received from their peers and not from authentic or more proficient sources.

These conditions raise some questions on how the learners’ L2 develops with such extensive peer-interaction. In recent theories on language development, it has been argued that authentic exposure as well as frequency are important in the success of language acquisition. For instance, in a dynamic usage based (DUB) approach (see Verspoor &

Behrens, 2011: 38), the target language is seen as a set of conventions and learners will pick up the conventions that they hear most frequently. Therefore, it is important to give learners as much authentic input as possible. However, in a pesantren, learners tend to get their input from their peers and may pick up the conventions that they hear most frequently from each other. In a previous descriptive study describing the learners’

English in a pesantren (Aziez, 2016), the learners’ English contains a preponderance of L1 interference forms and overgeneralizations at the lexical, syntactical and phonological levels.

As mentioned earlier, peer-interaction has been argued to support language learning to some extent, but it is not without criticism. Some researchers believe that corrective feedback from peers can be poorer in quality compared to feedback from the teachers (Adams, 2007). Xu, Fan, and Xu (2019) also reported that learners tend to be

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more hesitant in providing corrective feedback to their peers. They also found that the learners provided more corrective feedback on morphosyntactic errors than lexical and phonological errors.

The aforementioned studies as well as the description of the pesantren lead to the question whether the language that the learners in a pesantren produce becomes fossilized and may be considered a pidginized form of English. According to Richards (1974: 77), there are similarities between learners’ languages and pidgin languages. Both codes are seen as a result of language contact and characterized by grammatical structure and lexical content originating from two or more languages. This notion led Schumann (1978) to his study on Alberto, a Spanish speaking immigrant in the US. In his study, which gave birth to the acculturation hypothesis or the pidginization hypothesis, he concluded that a pidginized form of a language may develop for two main reasons; (a) when learners separate themselves socially and psychologically from speakers of the target language, and (b) when the target language is used by learners for a very limited range of functions (Richards & Schmidt, 2010). In a later study, Andersen (1981) compared Alberto’s English IL and Bickerton’s (1977) research on Hawaiian Pidgin English and found similarities between both types of linguistic codes.

Since pidgin languages are used primarily for communicating ideas, they are restricted languages that serve only a communicative function; speakers of pidgins normally do not identify themselves with the group who speak the pidgin. They tend to reside in their own group apart from purposes of contact with the other group. This is not really the same in the case of learners in a pesantren. Since they are forced to speak English inside the school complex, English is used primarily to communicate ideas and they do not identify themselves as English speakers but they do form a speech community and group within the pesantren. This is similar to the case of a pidgin-like language produced by students in immersion programmes in Canada and the United States (Swain, 1997; Hammerly, 1991). Being critical of this type of communicative approach, Hammerly (1991) especially scrutinized these immersion programmes and concluded that although the students were successful in attaining a high level of communicative proficiency (fluency), they failed in terms of linguistic accuracy. He cites studies which show that “an error-laden classroom pidgin becomes established as early as Grade 2 or 3 because students are under pressure to communicate and are encouraged to do so regardless of grammar” (1991: 5).

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On that basis, the present study aims to examine the development of English learners in a pesantren, which relies heavily on peer-interaction in the learning process without much authentic exposure. This study will also seek whether this condition will result in stagnation in their L2 development and exhibits features of pidginization.

Section 1.2 describes in detail an education system in Indonesia named pesantren and brings an overview of language learning practice in pesantren institutions in Indonesia. Section 1.3 deals with the role of interaction and second language acquisition, consisting of the general theories and previous studies from interactionist approach.

Section 1.4 provides a discussion on second language development from a dynamic usage-based perspective. Section 1.5 deals with second language acquisition and the issue of pidginization, emphasizing the comparison between the two concepts. Section 1.6 concludes this chapter by summarizing the relevant theoretical positions and presenting the questions that the current study aims to answer.